The objective of this project is to specify the process of life course development in adulthood as it affects family patterns of retirement. Family models of retirement that take into account the intertwining of family and work over the life course are needed because earlier retirement among men and higher levels of work by women mean that retirement is increasingly a family transition, involving two retirements. The proposal specifies the patterns, linkages, and pathways that lead to family retirement. The family life course consists of a sequence of family and work states that together form a family "pathway," with each new state reflecting earlier family history and current historical conditions. Each new state constrains subsequent options, and the pathway created culminates in the regulation of late-life transitions such as retirement. The analysis will focus on four issues: specification of the impact of early life-course events on intermediate mid-life states, and ultimately retirement; examination of the factors that regulate critical preretirement events such as pension eligibility; specification of the sequence of events that leads to preretirement family states that affect retirement; and an examination of cohort differences in pathways to retirement. Data are from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Force Participation-- Mature Women Sample. Both are long-term panels that allow specification of family and work states and change in those states over tune. These changes in state will be analyzed using discrete- and continuous-time survival models as well as logistic and multiple regression.